After horrifying the executives at HBO by tweeting a meme about the impending reinstatement of sanctions against Iran on Friday (the image was a play on HBO's "Winter is Coming" advertising campaign for its hit series "Game of Thrones"), President Trump clarified that the White House remained open to working out a "more comprehensive" agreement with Iran that would ideally help curb the regime's "malign activities" in the Middle East and "forever block" Iran from building nuclear weapons.

This isn't the first time that Trump has said he is open to a "new deal" with Iran. But the mildly less threatening rhetoric was, we imagine, designed to encourage the pullback in oil prices seen in recent weeks. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would grant sanctions waivers to eight countries (but not the European Union as a whole). The US has also decided not to encourage SWIFT to disconnect Iranian banks from the global financial system.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I agree with the author of this blog about Trump's seemingly softening stance was for public consumption regarding rising oil prices.

But you have to understand; there is a deep reverence in President Trump's attitude toward two of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in the Middle East, and the best contenders for that title are the Butcher of Gaza (Israel's Netanyahu) and the Butcher of Yemen, (Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince bin Salman).

I am quite certain that Trump has given his word to his largest US backer, Sheldon Adelson, and to Netanyahu, that if Iran doesn't pull back from these
alleged "malign activities" (whatever the heck these are supposed to be), that there will be a time and a place for a US-led/Israeli backed, military challenge against it, including a proxy of Saudi Arabian fighters, and regime change in Tehran.

But I would very much like to add a cautionary note to President Trump and his advisors on this; through his sanctions against it, President Trump has drawn Iran, Russia, and China closer together than they have ever been, economically and militarily in the history of those countries.

IF US/ISIS attached fighters pick a fight with either Russia or Iran in Syria, there will be hell to pay, and that may be the way the US believes it can "legitimately" start the war with Iran; through its facilities in Syria, assisting the Syrians and Russians in getting the rebels out.

Right now, the US military doesn't have the weaponry; the troop strength, the manufacturing, or the money to insure a positive outcome to a war against China, Iran, or Russia, in Syria.

The US, through its Presidential Advisor, John Bolton, has stated flatly that
the US military will not leave Syria, as long as there are Iranian advisors there. Russia is still very much involved in Syria, and working with Turkey and other countries toward its reconstruction.

I am deeply concerned that the long fuse of American intervention in Syria, as a "doorway" to a war against Iran is about to get lit, either after the midterms, or the first of next year.

The last chance to avoid a full-blown 2019 trade war may come later this month when President Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 Buenos Aires summit in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It will be the first-ever G-20 summit to be hosted in South America and could be one of the most significant meetings in quite some time -- as both leaders will try to resolve trade disputes.

Right now, the economic impact of the escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing seemed to deepen last month as factory activity and export orders dove across Asia, with some analyst warning Reuters that the worst has yet to come.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I really hope these differences can be resolved; trade wars have a nasty reputation for morphing into actual shooting wars.

Washington is pressuring Beijing to act like a “normal nation” on the world stage, Mike Pompeo has repeated, accusing China, ironically, of disregarding international laws and seeking to impose “decades of pain” around the globe.
“We’re very worried that China will put the people in many countries around the world, in Africa and Central America and Latin America, in a debt trap that will cause those countries decades of pain,” the Secretary of State said on the Laura Ingraham Show

Chinese President Xi Jinping told military officials responsible for the disputed South China Sea to be better “prepared for war” as tensions with the US are rising. Beijing may be bracing for a worst-case scenario with the US.

Secret U.S. missile and electro-optics technology was transferred to China recently by Israel, prompting anger from the U.S. and causing a senior Israeli defense official to resign.

The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.

One of the key responsibilities of the Southern Theater Command is protecting China’s interests in the South China Sea, where Beijing claims sovereignty over a number of islands. The sea is of strategic importance to Chinese trade. The US rejects the territorial claims and has been sending so-called Freedom of Navigation missions through the waters and airspace, which Beijing considers its own, as a gesture of defiance.

Chief of US Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said Tuesday the US and China “will meet each other more and more on the high seas” as the two nations confront each other in the South China Sea.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Just because something is the most ham-fistedly, pig-headedly stupid thing it could possibly do, is utterly no guarantee that the US government will not do it.

Provoking China over these islands is definitely one of the most ham-fistedly, pig-headedly stupid things the US military could be doing right now.

As someone who sits on an Island which would be a first-strike target for China, if this war cranks up, you can color me extraordinarily nervous right now.

It has been a while since the market was reminded of how quickly and violently it can be rocked as a result of Trump's mood swings, and moments ago it got a quick refresher when Bloomberg reported that the U.S. is preparing to announce by early December tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports if next month's talks between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping fail to ease the trade war.

As Trump had threatened previously, the latest tariff list would would apply to all imports from China that aren’t already covered by previous rounds of tariffs which would add up to $257 billion using last year’s import figures.

Approximately 2,500 researchers from Chinese military universities have infiltrated Western universities over the past decade, focusing on the so-called "Five Eyes" group of countries, reports the Financial Times, citing a new report from Australian government-funded think tank, the Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

According to the report, many of the Chinese researchers failed to disclose their military affiliations, while publishing a large volume of joint papers with Western scientists which can help Beijing's technological ambitions.

Chinese Ambassador to Tehran Pang Sen underlined his country's full support and continued cooperation with Iran despite the US sanctions.
"We are strongly opposed to any unilateral sanctions. We oppose the US sanctions (against Iran). We will continue our cooperation with Iran," Pang said on Sunday.

He added that Iran and China have been in contacts and consultations in the past few months to find ways to continue their cooperation during the sanctions era.

Pang also said that Beijing supports Iran's full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Scientists say just 1 cubic centimetre of the carbon nanotube material won’t break under the weight of more than 800 tonnes
Tsinghua University researchers are trying to get the fibre into…

A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.

They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.

Beijing and Tokyo sealed a multi-billion dollar currency swap arrangement on Friday, aimed at enhancing financial stability and spurring business activity in both countries.

According to the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the arrangement which will last until October 25, 2021, will allow the exchange of local currencies between the two central banks for up to 200 billion yuan or 3.4 trillion yen ($30 billion).

And of course it is a good thing that nobody has been hurt by these devices. Obviously targeting anyone with packages containing explosive materials is terrible, even if those devices were not rigged with the intention of detonating and harming anyone, and it is a good thing that not a single one of them has done so. It is a good thing that none of America’s political elites were targeted by the sort of explosive device that America drops on people in other countries every single day.

You know, the kind that actually explode.

Apparently some Acme comedy bombs mailed to a number of extremely rich people, which thankfully did not hurt anybody at all, are infinitely more newsworthy than the real bombs which maim and destroy children in Yemen on an industrial scale.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) October 24, 2018

Webmaster's Commentary:

As a Christian Pacifist Activist, the disconnect the writer of this post sees, looking at what is happening around this world, with the US complicit in so many deaths, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Niger, Somalia, and Iraq, is utterly and painfully true.

Folks, when people in power in this talk about the "honor", "glory" and "defending the American way of life" as valid descriptions of the wars in which the Unhinged, Surveilled State of Amerika is currently, and about to be, enmeshed, they are lying to you.

Simply put (and this guy was hopelessly wrong about a lot of things),when Karl Marx said that wars are economic in their origin, the man was absolutely, dead-on correct.

The war in Iraq?!? This was done to give the US and Western-centric corporations control over its oil.

The "undeclared war" in Yemen, where the US is enabling Saudi war crimes as I type this?!?

The war in Afghanistan?!? To control the pipeline rights, rare mineral development, and control of the poppy crops, from which a booming market in illicit heroin is derived.

The coming war against Iran?!? First, this will be done to honor Trump's commitment to both Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and his biggest American Supporter, Sheldon Adelson, who has supported the Trump Campaign with millions in overt, and covert funding, and secondly, to force this country to always sell its oil only in US dollars, post-regime change.

Of course, both Netanyahu and Adelson fully expect this war to be fully executed.... only at the costs of only US blood, and US money, not Israeli

With its desire for more and more wars, with which to enrich the US government financially, we are looking a Federal deficit of almost 780 billion dollars in fiscal 2018; that's a huge number to wrap my head around.

Instead of limiting spending in a reasonable and rational way, the US government appears to be miring the US public in an absolutely unpayable debt structure, from which there is no way out. This falls on the backs of hard-working Americans, who are desperately struggling to keep food on the table, and a roof over their heads. The people creating this unpayable debt have armies of lawyers and accountants on speed-dial, to insure that they get the best break possible with taxes.

Russia and China, which may well come to Iran's aid, should it be invaded, have weaponry the US military can only wet-dream about; sorry for being blunt, but because of their close relationship with both the Pentagon and Congress, and contributing lavishly to the campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle, our military industrial complex has been consistently behind the 8 ball, in staying at least two steps ahead of where our international competitors are, in terms of developing lower cost weapons that just... do the job brilliantly.

Please understand; as a Christian pacifist activist, I hate war; but if such a war happens, I want to see our brothers and sisters in uniform equipped with the best, most brilliantly crafted weaponry that actually works as advertised, and beyond.

So, we have a the US government hopelessly indebted to its creditors, and a potential coming world war, where our military doesnt' have the money, the manufacturing, the troop strength, or weaponry to insure a positive outcome in a world war, ultimately against Russia, and China.

This is a potential recipe for a complete, unmitigated disaster for this country, the consequences of which may be both horrific... and irreversible.

And we have a companion piece this morning, from blackistednews.com:

Saudi-led airstrikes hit civilians in YemenIf We, the People, do nothing, in the most peaceful, logical way possible, to get US involvement in these US-enabled Saudi war crimes in Yemen to stop, then We the People are also, absolutely and unequivocally, complicit in these war crimes as well.

China vowed it will never give up an inch of its territory - whether it's the self-ruled island of Taiwan it claims as its own or in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

China's Defence Minister Wei Fenghe made the remarks on Thursday at the opening of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in the wealthy city-state of Singapore.

"If someone tries to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese armed forces will take action at any price," Wei warned.

Just after U.S. warships again made a provocative passage through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, further making already strained tensions between the Washington and Beijing — currently in the midst of a trade war — even hotter, Steve LeVine at Axios poses the question long on the Western public's mind: what are the chances of a US-China war?

LeVine recently crossed paths with Graham Allison, who published his explosive "Destined For War: Can America And China Escape Thucydides Trap?" a year ago which detailed the reasons for a coming major war being all but inevitable, sparking a global debate about the Harvard professor's controversial thesis. LeVine followed up with Allison in relation to the recent uptick in tensions in the region of the South China Sea:

He said, if history holds, the U.S. and China appeared headed toward war.

Over the weekend, I asked him for an update — specifically whether the danger of the two going to war seems to have risen.

North Korea imported at least $640 million (£493 million) worth of luxury goods from China last year, in defiance of UN sanctions outlawing such trade over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, a South Korean politician said on Monday.

The United States has urged strict implementation of sanctions as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign which Washington has credited with bringing impoverished North Korea to the negotiating table.

But there have been signs the campaign has been losing steam since North Korea suspended nuclear and missile tests and leader Kim Jong-un vowed steps towards denuclearisation at a US-North Korean summit in June - and as China and Russia called for relaxed sanctions.

Lu Wei, once the gatekeeper of the internet for the entire population of China, pleaded guilty on Friday to abuse of power and accepting what amounted to US$4.6 million in bribes over the span of his 15-year career.

Lu Wei also made a final statement to the court, and admitted guilt and expressed regret,” Xinhua said.

Wei became the head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), in 2014, after a career in which he rose to become the director of the state news agency Xinhua, then worked at the Beijing municipal party committee, and the party’s Central Publicity Committee.

As head of the CAC, Wei controlled China’s notorious regime of internet censorship—which included blocking access to Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and introducing criminal charges against citizens who posted banned content.

The 55-kilometre (34-mile) crossing, which includes a snaking road bridge and underwater tunnel, will open to traffic tomorrow at 9am local time, linking Hong Kong with the southern mainland city of Zhuhai and the gambling enclave of Macau, across the waters of the Pearl River Estuary.

The submerged tunnel, which is under the Lingding Ocean near Hong Kong, is connected by two artificial islands each occupying 10,000 square metres (one million square feet). At 6.75 kilometres (4.2 miles) long and 40 metres (131 feet) deep, the tunnel creates a gap in the bridge that will allow cargo ships to pass through the busy delta.

Xi presided over an inauguration ceremony attended by Hong Kong's and Macau's city leaders at a new port terminal in Zhuhai.

China said on Tuesday it would “never accept any form of blackmail” after US President Donald Trump said his decision to withdraw from a nuclear pact with Russia was also linked to Beijing’s arsenal. China is not a signatory to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which the US signed with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but Trump said Monday that Beijing should be included in the accord. “Now that the United States want to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty, they start to inappropriately speak about other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters. “This approach of shifting the blame on others is utterly unjustifiable and unreasonable,” Hua said, adding that China had always pursued a defensive national defense policy. “We will never accept any form of blackmail,” AFP quoted her as saying.

The former Republican congressman and head of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity told RT that he doesn't believe a potential US withdrawal from the 1987 treaty would do anything to enhance US security.

Trump, if he follows through with his threat and tears down the landmark treaty, signed between US President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, "won't do us any good," Paul said.

The US military industrial complex will try to justify the nuclear build-up by pointing to China's militarization, a growing source of concern for the military establishment.

"It means that the American government, the military industrial complex wants to make a lot more weapons, because it is the Chinese: 'The Chinese are making all those weapons, why can't' we?'"

US President Donald Trump threatned Russia and China that Washington intends to build up its nuclear arsenal until “people come to their senses.”
The president said his words were directed towards Moscow and Beijing, as he prepared to unilaterally leave the Intermediate Nuclear Forces in Europe (INF) treaty. The US president implied China should be part of any new nuclear arms control treaty.

“Russia has not adhered to the agreement,” neither in form or in spirit, Trump told reporters outside the White House on Monday, before departing for a campaign rally in Texas.

Construction started in 2009 on the massive crossing, which includes a snaking road bridge and underwater tunnel, linking Hong Kong's Lantau island to the southern mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai and the gambling enclave of Macau, across the waters of the Pearl River Estuary.

Stretching across 55 kilometres (34 miles), it is 14 miles longer than the width of the English Channel from Dover in the United Kingdom to Calais in France.

Pompeo has just concluded a tour to Latin America in an apparent attempt to mend fences with countries in the region, as ties between Washington and its Latin American neighbors have been on a downward trajectory since Donald Trump became president.

While seeking to engage the region by touting the goodwill of the United States, Pompeo did not hesitate to stab China in the back, cautioning Panama and other nations about accepting China's loans under the Belt and Road Initiative.

The US top diplomat even pointed an accusing finger at Chinese State-owned enterprises for not being transparent and market-driven, alleging that they are pursing benefits only for the Chinese government. Such wild remarks are what we have come to expect from members of the Trump administration, being based on neither truth nor fact.

One wonders what went on in Russian minds during last month’s spectacle of US President Trump raking Beijing over the coals on accusations of meddling, in the upcoming US midterm elections, to try to undermine his trade policies.
Certainly the Chinese, who evidently didn’t expect it, were shocked and outraged, but it was behavior to which Moscow was accustomed to being on the receiving end of – this time aimed at someone else for a change.

Geng Shuang, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, called Donald Trump’s claims “totally far-fetched and fictional,” and advised the “US side to stop its unwarranted accusations and slander against China and refrain from wrong words and deeds that might hurt our bilateral relations and fundamental interests.”

The Justice Department has brought its first criminal case over alleged Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, a St. Petersburg, Russia-based accountant, was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to defraud the United States for taking part in a scheme to spend in excess of $10 million since the beginning of the year on targeted social media ads and web postings intended “to sow division and discord in the U.S. political system.”

Khusyaynova, who is not in U.S. custody, allegedly works for Concord, a Russia-based firm that special counsel Robert Mueller's office indicted in February for alleged interference in the 2016 election.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Foreign influence? Let's talk about all those illegal immigrants in our country the Democrats are counting on to hand them Congress!

A crucial Pentagon report on the US defense industrial base and “supply chain resiliency” bluntly accuses China of “military expansion” and “a strategy of economic aggression,” mostly because Beijing is the only source for “a number of chemical products used in munitions and missiles.”

Russia is mentioned only once, but in a crucial paragraph: as a – what else – “threat,” alongside China, for the US defense industry.

***
Events that have transpired in and around Syria and the Middle East with the defeat of ISIS during the fall of 2018 clearly prove one thing. The US and Israel, and under Trump the two are inseparable, intend to push Russia and China to nuclear confrontation.

The Pentagon is fully behind this, wanting to stop Russia and China before new weapons systems are fully deployed and America’s perceived nuclear advantage is gone forever. There are other reasons as well, indicating insanity among both American and Israeli commands.

Israel has millions of Palestinian hostages while the US has, over the last two decades, built nuclear shelters in Israel for up to 250,000 Jewish citizens, shelters that include ICBM silos with missiles that can hit anywhere in Europe.

Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development said on Thursday that Moscow and Beijing are working on an inter-governmental agreement to boost the use of the ruble and yuan in mutual trade settlements.

“The document is currently being prepared, the process is not easy,” said Deputy Minister of Russia’s Economic Development Sergey Gorkov, as quoted by TASS. “Russia and China have had some experience of using national currencies in bilateral trade.”

Gorkov added that Russia and China have been successfully implementing the terms of ruble-yuan currency swap agreement, clinched in 2014 to boost trade using national currencies and eliminate dependence on the dollar and the euro. The deal was extended at the end of 2017.

China’s local governments may have accumulated 40 trillion yuan ($5.8 trillion) of off-balance sheet debt, or even more, suggesting further defaults are in store, according to S&P Global Ratings.

“The potential amount of debt is an iceberg with titanic credit risks,” S&P credit analysts led by Gloria Lu wrote in a report Tuesday. Much of the build-up relates to local government financing vehicles, which don’t necessarily have the full financial backing of local governments themselves.

As President Donald Trump continues to ramp up trade pressure on China, Beijing may be "less motivated to cooperate" with the U.S. over sanctions against North Korea, an expert told CNBC Wednesday.

"China has been taking steps to relax its enforcement of sanctions even before the trade tensions with the United States flared up," according to Scott Seaman director of Asia at political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group.

But as the trade war between the world's two largest economies drags on, China could find more reasons to relax its enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, he said.

China’s soybean imports in June jumped 13.1 percent from a year ago as buyers scooped up Brazilian supplies to avoid potentially higher costs on U.S. soybeans that are subject to Beijing’s tariffs, customs data showed on Friday.

Hong Kong’s freedoms will not be curbed, but city cannot be used as anti-China base, top Beijing official
says

A top Beijing official in charge of Hong Kong affairs has sought to reassure the city that the central government has no intention of curbing its freedoms, and recent warnings against the city being used as an anti-Communist Party and anti-China base merely reflect a long-standing central government policy.

Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) director Zhang Xiaoming told a delegation of senior news executives from the local media on Thursday that both the central and local governments must exercise “zero tolerance” when dealing with calls for the city’s independence, which crossed the “red line” of undermining Chinese sovereignty.

“It is nothing unusual for state leaders to send out kind reminders that Hong Kong should not be used as an anti-China and anti-Communist Party base,” delegation leader Siu Sai-wo quoted Zhang as saying.

>>>

(* What the ....
Russia has no problem with using Ukraine for a anti Russian Base !

Two US B-52 bombers have flown over the disputed South China Sea, in a move that could inflame tensions ahead of a key regional defence summit in Singapore where the US and Chinese defence ministers are slated to meet.

The two US Air Force bombers departed from the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam as part of a “routine training mission in the vicinity of the South China Sea”>>>

The Chinese government has said the mission is part of a four-stage plan to build a moon base. “We hope to start the construction of the [robot-manned] lunar base around 2025 and realize a manned landing on the moon around 2030,” Zhao Xiaojin of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Group told Xinhuanet in March.

But Gossel said putting a satellite at L2 could also enable Chinese attack spacecraft to zoom past the moon — about a quarter-million miles away — and then sneak up on critical U.S. intelligence and communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, just 28,300 miles up — as occurred in the 2011 apocalypse-themed film “Melancholia.”

China is two years away from sending a lighting satellite to space, according to Wu Chunfeng, chairman of space contractor Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co (CASC).

The device has been designed to illuminate an area as large as 80km and works by complementing the light of the moon at night, Mr Wu explained during a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship activity held last week.

And the precise illumination range will be controlled within a few dozen metres, Mr Wu added.

The device's power of illuminating the Earth will be eight-time stronger than the one of the real moon, enough to replace the lights on the street.

“Something has to be done...How can my government be subsidizing China and driving me out of business?”

Those are the words of Jayme Smaldone, who runs a 12-employee housewares company in Rahway, N.J., who first became aware of the problem when he noticed websites selling Chinese knockoffs of his “Mighty Mug,” a desktop coffee cup he designed with an anti-topple base.

And it appears President Trump has listened to Jayme among many others, as The New York Times reports that he plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty that has allowed Chinese companies to ship small packages to the United States at a steeply discounted rate, undercutting American competitors and flooding the market with cheap consumer goods.

Chinese medicine has been around an extremely long time. Systematic records of medical techniques first appeared in China around the second century BC. Since then, hundreds of thousands of doctors have worked their magic, eventually giving birth to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) of today.

The G-20 in Buenos Aires on November 30 could set the world on fire – perhaps literally. Let’s start with the US-China trade war. Washington won’t even start discussing trade with China at the G-20 unless Beijing comes up with a quite detailed list of potential concessions.

The word from Chinese negotiators is not at all bleak. Some sort of agreement could be reached on about a third of US demands. Debate on another third could ensue. But the last third is absolutely off-limits – due to Chinese national security imperatives, such as refusing to allow the opening of the domestic cloud computing market to foreign competition.

Naturally, as long as the housing bubble keeps inflating and prices keep rising, there is nothing to worry about as the population will keep spending money buoyed by illusory wealth appreciation. It is when housing starts to drop that Beijing begins to panic.

Fast forward to today, when Beijing may be starting to sweat because whereas Chinese property developers usually count on September and October to be their “gold and silver” months for sales, this year has turned out to be different. As the SCMP reports, not only were sales figures grim for September, but the seven-day national holiday last week also brought at least two "fangnao" incidents – when angry, and often violent, homeowners protest against price cuts offered by developers to new buyers.

In an exclusive interview on Fox News Sunday, Tiankai insisted that the very name of the location where said incident took place clearly shows whose vessel was “on the offensive” and who was “on the defensive.”

"Where the incident took place, you were right to say it was in South China Sea. So it’s at China’s doorstep," Tiankai said. "It’s not Chinese warships that are going to the coast of California, or to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s so close to the Chinese islands and it’s so close to the Chinese coast. So who is on the offensive? Who is on the defensive? This is very clear."

Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand.

Not while growing up as an orphan in his village near Lake Victoria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Kenya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settlement at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya.

But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey.

It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said.

“‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates.

Although the Chinese government has not yet gone so far in the ever-escalating trade war as to sanction United States oil, imports are drying up anyway as Chinese buyers shy away from US crude.

According to US Census Bureau data released last week, for the first time since 2016, China has halted purchases of US crude, importing zero barrels in August. A major blow coming from the second biggest economy in the world--a blow that is sure to have reverberating repercussions and retaliations.

It is still unclear whether Google would move forward with a search engine in China said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Alphabet Inc`s Google unit has told U.S. lawmakers it was considering "a variety of options" to offer additional services in China, but declined to detail plans for addressing Chinese censorship. The company has come under criticism after reports it was considering re-entering China`s search engine market and would comply with its internet censorship and surveillance policies.

Vice-president Mike Pence’s speech at the Hudson Institute on October 4 was an era-defining statement in the history of diplomacy between the United States and China. It declared a fundamental US policy shift and set a new course for the relationship between the world’s two largest economies and chief political adversaries, something not seen since US president Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972.

Historians might wish to compare Pence’s 45-minute policy statement with such historic episodes as George Kennan’s 8,000-word telegram in 1946, Winston Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech of 1946, and Harry Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” address to Congress in 1947, all of which underpinned the West’s cold war policy of containment toward the communist bloc led by the then-Soviet Union.

The new US diplomatic strategy toward China is the accumulation of two years of tense exchanges and failed talks, resulting in a tit-for-tat tariff war between the administrations of strongman leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

CHAPTER 1The discovery of the roundtrip and the beginning of globalisation

Globalisation is thought to have it's beginings in the 16th century when the Spanish silver dollar went transcontinental. Its acceptance as common currency arose when Spanish navigators in the Philippines established a circular shipping route, known as the tornaviaje, between Asia and the Americas. More than 250 years of uninterrupted trade ensued between Asia and the rest of the world. And the ships playing this route were known as China Ships

Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation
In 1519 a Spanish fleet of five vessels, under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, set sail from Seville in search of a route across the Pacific Ocean to East Asia. Magellan was killed in a battle during the voyage, leaving Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano and 18 surviving crew to become the first to circumnavigate the globe in a single expedition. Their expedition finally returned home to Spain in 1522

***
By the early 18th century, the British had so taken to drinking tea that some in the British government called it a “necessity of life”. The tea came from the southern Chinese city of Canton, designated by the Qing government as the only place where trading with foreigners was allowed. By 1725, the British East India 250,000 pounds of tea per year. This ballooned to 24 million pounds per year by 1805.

Unfortunately for the British, the Chinese bought few British products, and worse, they wanted to be paid only in silver. Thus, between 1710 and 1760, Britain paid 26 million pounds of the precious metal for its tea.

Britain soon ran out of silver and ideas of how to pay for its tea until it stumbled on the one item the Chinese liked and became addicted to – opium. In 1773, the East India Company secured a monopoly on the production and sale of opium grown in India

The Trump administration is moving deliberately to counter what the White House views as years of unbridled Chinese aggression, taking aim at military, political and economic targets in Beijing and signaling a new and potentially much colder era in U.S.-China relations.

China has sold $3 billion of sovereign dollar bonds. This is only the third such move by Beijing in the last 14 years, and the first involving bonds with a 30-year maturity.

China sold $1.5 billion of five-year bonds at 3.25 percent, $1 billion of 10-year bonds at 3.5 percent, and $500 million of 30-year bonds at four percent, the Finance Ministry said on Friday, as quoted by Reuters.

Beijing is the largest holder of US debt. As of July, China had $1.17 trillion invested in debt minted by the US Treasury.

The only promise that is new about the promised peace plan is the way it will be forced on the Palestinians: no one has promised that the plan itself will be new. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the outside—brought onside with the promise of continued military aid despite their crimes against humanity and violations of international law and the Palestinians weakened by being silenced, economically crushed and stripped of any friends to help them, the United States and Israel are now free to attempt to impose a peace plan on the Palestinians.

GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR PICHAI has refused to answer a list of questions from U.S. lawmakers about the company’s secretive plan for a censored search engine in China.

In a letter newly obtained by The Intercept, Pichai told a bipartisan group of six senators that Google could have “broad benefits inside and outside of China,” but said he could not share details about the censored search engine because it “remains unclear” whether the company “would or could release a search service” in the country.

Pichai’s letter contradicts the company’s search engine chief, Ben Gomes, who informed staff during a private meeting that the company was aiming to release the platform in China between January and April 2019. Gomes told employees working on the Chinese search engine that they should get it ready to be “brought off the shelf and quickly deployed.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

I would imagine that the Dragonfly prototype will be rolled out in the US very soon, as nearly the only way to get heavily censored information, while smaller sites get shut down (as Google, Twitter, and Facebook are now doing, with their deplatforming of conservative sites).

And THAT, my friends, is why the Federal Government will let this happen, first in China, then in the US, to provide as much total control over information as they can.

If you have never watched it, please get it now, preferably the director's cut; this man was beyond genius, in his approach to what the US would look like, a couple of decades after the film was made, and wow, was he spot-on in terms of the grinding disparities between the monied, and the have-nots in this country.

The intelligence agencies of the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have been cooperating closely on countering China’s “foreign activities” since the start of the year, Reuters reports.

The so-called Five Eyes network is also sharing intelligence with allies such as Germany and Japan, in what has become a multinational coalition against Beijing’s alleged foreign meddling. Washington and its partners have accused China of using foreign investments to pull political strings – an accusation that Beijing denies.

“Consultations with our allies, with like-minded partners, on how to respond to China’s assertive international strategy have been frequent and are gathering momentum,” a US official told Reuters. The unnamed source added that informal discussions on the matter have quickly turned into “detailed consultations on best practices and further opportunities for cooperation.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Note that NONE of this information is sourced, or attributed.

But please note; demonization of another country, plus sanctions placed on it, are most usually the solid prelude to a shooting war.

President Donald Trump has threatened to punish China further after an indictment against one of its spies was unsealed Wednesday by the Justice Department.

The president has been railing against Beijing’s intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices for years, hammering the issue since his 2016 presidential campaign. He is reportedly furious over this latest development and warned there is “a lot more to do” to retaliate against China, adding:

Over the past two weeks, with next to no media coverage, the United States has moved substantially closer toward open military confrontation with both Russia and China, the second- and third-ranked nuclear powers in the world.

On October 3, the United States threatened, for the first time since the Cold War, to directly attack the Russian homeland. UN Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison accused the country of violating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty by developing a nuclear cruise missile and said that Washington was preparing to “take out” the weapon with a US strike.

This statement came just three days after a Chinese warship set a collision course with a US destroyer carrying out a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, forcing the American ship to maneuver to avoid a collision and the potentially deadliest military clash in the Pacific in decades.

A glimmer of hope for improvement in Sino-US relations emerged today after reports that President's Trump and Xi would meet at the G-20 summit and that the U.S. Treasury will avoid labeling China an FX manipulator. The glimmers were enough to send the offshore Yuan surging from 6.94 overnight to as low as 6.87 in hours.

But were the rumors true, and was China willing to reciprocate to what appeared to be an olive branch by the Trump admin?

Moments ago we got the answer.

With China, and specifically it currency, now the fulcrum security in defining not only daily emerging market sentiment, but also telegraphing Beijing's day-to-day feelings toward the US president, traders were keenly focused on what the PBOC's Friday yuan fix would be, especially after two days of central bank fixes that were below the average analyst consensus.

Changyong Rhee identifies three risks to region’s growth pace: continued escalation of trade tensions, an acceleration of monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve, and a stronger-than-expected rise in oil prices

Attempts by the US to isolate China from much of the international trading system by concluding restrictive trade deals with its major trading partners would harm the global economy, the IMF’s top official in Asia has warned.

Changyong Rhee, head of its Asia and Pacific department, said on Friday that China is already integrated into the world economy, “and is basically too big,” for any such a plan to work.

“The US and China have to talk” to resolve their disagreements, he stressed in an exclusive interview with South China Morning Post during the IMF’s annual meetings in Bali, Indonesia, adding the current trade dispute could last “for a while”.

The administration of US President Donald Trump recently completed a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico>>>

Chinese state media rolled out a slew of combative opinion pieces in response to US Vice-President Mike Pence’s accusations against Beijing last week, as rhetoric intensifies in the widening strategic conflict between the powers.

A signed commentary from People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, attacked Pence for remarks he made last Thursday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative US think tank, targeting China for its foreign policy, trade practices and claims about meddling in US elections.

The nearly 5,400-word screed by “Zhong Xuanli”, a pseudonym used by the Central Propaganda Department’s Theory Bureau, sought to refute the vice-president’s address point by point, including a remarkable proposal for Beijing to buy four US Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers to help close China’s trade surplus with the US.

The problem is not that China does not buy, but that the United States does not sell,” the piece argued>>>

Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to the American spotlight. A career Israeli politician who attended school in the United States, he specializes in the kind of rhetoric that his American counterparts revel in—a kind of narcissism that’s more used car salesman than educator.